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Caught In the Draft

(1941 b 81')

En: 6 Ed: 5

A movie star wants to avoid the draft but enlists by mistake in order to please a colonel's daughter he wants to marry to be exempt from the draft.

Movie star Don Bolton (Bob Hope) stops a battle scene, because he is afraid of gunshots. Bert (Eddie Bracken) pampers Don, who likes a woman per night. Don meets Tony Fairbanks (Dorothy Lamour) but insults her father Col. Fairbanks (Clarence Kolb). Don's agent Steve (Lynne Overman) warns him about the draft, and Bert suggests Don get married. Bert and Steve ask Tony to come visit injured Don. She discovers he is faking, but she goes out with him. Bert urges Don to propose, and Don asks Tony to be his exemption. They kiss, and 32-year-old Don learns they plan to draft men 21 to 31. He changes his mind, and Tony calls him yellow.

The draft bill passes, and Don tells Tony he is enlisting. Steve prepares an actor to play a sergeant to reject Don; but the recruiting officer does not go to lunch and signs up Don for Col. Fairbanks' unit. Don, Bert, and Steve take the physical. Uniforms don't fit. At camp Don gets fan mail. Don calls on Tony, who tells him to soft-soap her father. Don says he'll try to become a corporal but upsets the colonel's toy soldiers. Don learns to drill, and a movie camera follows him. Don has to clean fish. Tony asks her father to make Don a driver, and he is put in a tank. Bert picks up a blonde and is kissing her. When driver Don feels her legs, she slaps Bert. They wreck the colonel's car and have to peel potatoes. Don goes to the Fairbanks house and bribes the orderly to replace him. Don finds Tony in bed, and her father comes in.

On the rifle range Don shakes. Don asks Tony to marry, and she gets him in the parachute unit. Don loses his parachute but does not jump. In the morning Don does not dress and is sent on guard duty. Tony warns Don he may be transferred. Bert and Steve bring Don his uniform, and Don goes with Bert's girl to put on his pants; but a maid takes them. Don hides as nurses undress and goes out the window. Don climbs in a bed and is given castor oil. In the hall Tony finds Don holding his pants, and Fairbanks sees him. Don gets back on guard duty in time.

During a war game the sergeant sends Don, Bert, and Steve to climb a hill. Bert says he switched a road-sign. Tony arrives on a horse and says a team is going into a live artillery range. Don refuses to go warn them, and she rides away but falls off her horse. Don socks Tony and gets on the horse with Steve. They lose the horse amid explosions but warn the soldiers of the danger. In the final scenes Col. Fairbanks makes Don, Steve, and Bert corporals, and Don weds Tony without his pants.

This farce is timed to ready the nation for the recently imposed draft to prepare America for entering the war.

Copyright © 2002 by Sanderson Beck

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